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Maryland’s Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, will hear a case involving a defense contractor, the county government and several Nanjemoy residents, according to the court’s website.
The case, Washington Security Group Holdings vs. Larry Bowie et al, received certification last week from the Court of Appeals that the court will hear the case.
The Court of Appeals uses a discretionary review process, called certiorari, where the court certifies whether a petition for appeal from the Court of Special Appeals, the court below the Court of Appeals, is in the public interest.
A vocal Nanjemoy housing activist and developer has asked the Charles County commissioners to pay him to survey substandard housing in his hometown.
Potentially complicating his company’s bid, Cornell Posey is facing felony charges for theft and forgery in Charles County District Court. Filed in January 2011, charging documents allege that Posey altered a Florida insurance company’s check for $38,448 and fraudulently deposited it in his personal SunTrust bank account in 2009.
Mediation for the Charles County commissioners is going ahead, the board decided Tuesday, but who will pay for it depends on who is participating.
Three board members announced they would reach into their own pockets to pay their share of the mediation bill, saying arguments among commissioners smack more of the personal than of the professional.
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My own feeling on this is this is more personal than personnel. I’m not going to make this formal but I am going to reimburse” the county for a fifth of the fee, Commissioner Ken Robinson (D) said. Commission Bobby Rucci (D) and commissioners’ President Candice Quinn Kelly (D) followed his lead.
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“I disagree. The media is posing it as a personnel or a personal problem. I don’t believe it’s a personal problem. It’s a commissioner problem,” Commissioner Debra M. Davis (D) said.
“I don’t think the taxpayers should foot the bill either,” Rucci replied.
Commissioner Reuben B. Collins II (D) also refused, saying he wouldn’t make such a choice on short notice.
“I don’t know. I don’t tend to make these decisions publicly. If I do, I do it in good faith,” Collins said.
[...]
Every president since Richard Nixon has called for the U.S. to wean itself from needing oil from unstable or unsavory countries. The nation’s new-found energy riches are likely to bring that ambition closer to reality in the next two decades, according to many forecasters.
It’s no pipe dream. The U.S. is already the world’s fastest-growing oil and natural gas producer. Counting the output from Canada and Mexico, North America is “the new Middle East,” Citigroup analysts declare in a recent report.
The U.S. Energy Information Agency says U.S. oil imports will drop 20% by 2025. Oil giant BP projects the U.S. will get 94% of its energy domestically by 2030, up from 77% now, as oil imports fall by half. Energy billionaire T. Boone Pickens, a major investor in oil and natural-gas companies, said the U.S. can at least end oil imports from Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, about half its total, through new drilling and by shifting diesel-swilling trucks to natural gas. Any other oil needs should be from politically stable allies such as Canada, Pickens said.
President Barack Obama and other members of the administration may be giving warm advice to freshly minted graduates at commencements across the country, but the reality is the job market is now much colder.
More than a million new bachelor degree holders are about to begin to break into an economy that doesn’t have enough jobs to support the people who already were in it, and will struggle to absorb them. They’re already facing the prospect of huge student loans — with interest rates for those being the subject of most of the political conversation about new graduates. Things don’t look much better for their hopes of earning incomes so they can start making the payments on those loans, or much else.
A new survey finds nearly three-quarters of Marylanders support reintroducing elk in the state’s western counties.
The rest were almost equally split among those opposing reintroduction and those who did not have an opinion. The Department of Natural Resources released the survey results on Tuesday.
Elk have already been successfully reintroduced in Kentucky and Pennsylvania, and the DNR is partnering with sportsmen’s groups to study reintroduction in Maryland. However, the proposal has run into opposition from county officials in Garrett County, who said they were not included in preliminary talks.
Date: 05/15/2012
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Innovation that develops life-saving technology is alive and well at NAS Patuxent River. The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) Human Systems Department (HSD), home to 26 different laboratories, harvests this spirit of innovation everyday through its research, development and forward thinking.
Technologies and capabilities developed in the HSD laboratories ensure the safety, survivability and highest levels of human performance within the fleet through innovative designs both in the labs and through partnerships with industry.
Teams from Dr. Thomas L. Higdon, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd and Indian Head elementary schools, as well as Mattawoman Middle School, placed in the 2012 Save the Bay Robotics Challenge held May 5 at North Point High School. The event was sponsored by the U.S. Navy and National Defense Education Program and is part of the 2011-12 Indian Head Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) In-School Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) program.
The “Purple Robots” team from Higdon was named the overall winner at the elementary school level. Team members are fifth graders Caleb Griffith, Taylor Gascon, Abigail Mattingly, Sydney Maddox and McKenna Simpson. Their team also received first place in the robotics and research proposal categories. In the robotics category, students complete eight challenges with their robots on a constructed challenge board. In the research proposal category, teams are judged on research conducted on aspects of the Chesapeake Bay. The team was required to present their research during a 10-minute interview.
With so many Marylanders using medical oxygen therapy, and the amount of injuries and deaths occurring every year in both Maryland and nationwide, State Fire Marshal William E. Barnard is offering several safety tips to prevent a tragedy by fire while using oxygen. “All Marylanders need to be aware of the potential hazards involving medical oxygen use. Oxygen itself is not flammable, however, an oxygen enriched environment can cause materials to ignite more readily and burn at a faster rate than normal,” stated Barnard. “Please consider these statistics and safety tips to ensure individuals using oxygen therapy and those around them are protected from the effects of fire”.
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The big issues, of course, are who and what are causing the pollution in the Potomac. The reality seems to be that there are a lot of places and people who are contributing to the Potomac’s less-than-pristine condition. Runoff from residential development and from farming activities seems to be among the biggest problems.
But not everyone is in agreement about the specifics, especially where farming is concerned. Emmitsburg farmer William Morrow, a member of Future Harvest—Chesapeake Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture, says his fellow farmers need to and can do more, and suggests that adequate buffer zones around farms would significantly address a major problem—manure runoff.
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The Maryland General Assembly’s special session, which began Monday, gave Sen. David Brinkley a chance to push back against mandating the best available technology for septics serving new homes. On Monday, Brinkley tried to amend a budget bill to block the regulation proposed by the Maryland Department of the Environment.
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After lawmakers rejected Brinkley’s amendment, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. paused to note that Brinkley’s grievance had substance.
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After the committee reviews the proposed regulation, Summers said, the public will have a chance to comment before the agency adopts it.
Without fanfare, the nation’s nuclear power regulators have overhauled community emergency planning for the first time in more than three decades, requiring fewer exercises for major accidents and recommending that fewer people be evacuated right away.
The revamp, the first since the program began after Three Mile Island in 1979, also eliminates a requirement that local responders always practice for a release of radiation.
At least four years in the works, the changes appear to clash with more recent lessons of last year’s reactor crisis in Japan.
With the fifth special session of the General Assembly in the past eight years underway, it’s time to address the problems they create.
Though not uniquely a business issue, businesses are often the target or victim of special sessions, and the rules governing them make it hard to defend against bad legislation.
Special sessions are typically called after the political leadership has predetermined the legislation that will be passed. By the time the session begins there is no way for the public to alter the outcome. No meaningful advance notice is given of public hearings for bills, and bills are routinely passed through several readings in a single day by suspending the rules.
U.S. builders began work on more homes last month, evidence that the battered housing market is slowly healing.
The Commerce Department said Wednesday that builders broke ground at a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 717,000 homes in April from March. That’s 2.6 percent more than March’s total, which was revised higher. Construction rose for both single-family homes and apartments.
Building permits, a gauge of future construction, fell last month from a 3 1/2 year high to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 715,000. But that was because of a 23 percent drop in the volatile apartment category. Permits for single-family homes rose almost 2 percent.
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